Junior Why? How was your middle school experience?

On the bright side, at least they didn't have to go to junior high ... (Photo: British Lion)

My kid entered sixth grade this year, and she attends a school which combines sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. While it is called middle school, she is now in junior high.
Cue ominous music in the background.

Allowing your child to attend junior high essentially feels like wrapping her in steaks and gently walking her over to the cage where they keep the tigers. So far, she has been fine, had very few traumas and has weathered the social side of entering a larger school just fine. She’s outgoing and confident, so this should have been unsurprising to me.

However, I am tormented by the fact that I still remember junior high. Looking back, I am stunned by how medieval it all was. By that I mean violent and regressive and lawless and cruel, not chivalrous, and lord knows I could have made good use of a suit of armor.

I know I’m not alone in my feelings about that particularly painful part of childhood-adolescence. I work with clients all day long, and around the time my kid was starting school I took an informal and unscientific poll of people’s junior high experiences. Guess how many people reported having a good time? One, and that person went to school in another country, where they don’t lump all the insecure adolescents together in one place and give them free rein. The rest of my clients often shuddered involuntarily at the mention of that school period, or turned green, and for once I don’t think it was the exercises I was putting them through.

Some of the men I train mentioned horrible bullies and getting beat up or intimidated after school, and almost all the women I train listed friendships that turned ugly, or persistent mocking by peers. What the hell? Can you imagine going to work each day and worrying that your coworker was going to push you up against your desk and call you a pussy? Or calling your closest friend and finding out she had another friend staying the night and they both decided you were really annoying and they were going to tell all your other friends that you liked some guy you worked with? As adults I don’t think we would tolerate this crap, though it might bring back vivid memories of that dreaded school time.

In my case, I had a friend triangle that turned ugly until I was ostracized by a larger friend circle. I also discovered, courtesy of my peers, that I was overweight, a bad dresser, and needed to start shaving my legs. For starters. This angst was amplified by the fact that I was just learning who I was; I was filled with daily insecurities and self-loathing; I had unrequited crushes that never panned out but did fill me with terror lest my cohort mock me about it; and I had exactly zero adults to talk to about the whole mess.

In the interests of a balanced picture, I will say I had some fabulous teachers who helped inform my critical thinking and understanding of the world for years to come. And when my friendships fell apart, I ended up meeting the girl who would be my best friend all through high school. So it wasn’t a total wash.

You still couldn’t pay me enough to go back and repeat that time in my life.

My sense from talking to my kid is that some things are different now. There’s far less tolerance of bullying and violence than when I was in school, and even being a bystander is thought of as being a participant. The homophobic stuff is much more frowned upon. There are girls groups to address emotional cruelty and exclusion. Kids also seem more inclined to go to adults with problems than we were.

At the same time, there are new ways to pick on each other, with texting and Facebook and websites and YouTube. And the teasing doesn’t sound like it has declined too much. I mean, I know adults who are insecure about their athletic abilities because of the stupid presidents fitness exam in junior high. It’s such an utterly formative and twisted time. I keep talking to my child, hoping that if she ends up running into trouble, at least she can have a grownup to cry to, who will hug her tightly, and that she will know that the whole thing, while potentially very hard, is survivable.

What about you? How was your junior high experience, HA HA? No, really?

KELLY MILLS is a freelance writer, and an owner and trainer at Phoenix Gym in Berkeley. Her daughter is turning out really well despite her mother’s tendency to swear and tell stories about her own geeky childhood.